It is against this backdrop that the Foreign Policy Centre has published its new report, Full and Equal Citizens? How to deliver equality for Israel’s Arab community, as part of our work on minority rights across the world, which makes a number of recommendations for progressives in both Israel and internationally about how to tackle this inequality.
First of all it is imperative to bridge the planning divide that sees so many Arab majority areas either unrecognised or with out-of-date official plans. Ensuring that every community in Israel has current and accurate plans would help ease the dramatic shortage of housing available to the Arab community and end the impasse where unapproved building takes place to meet local demand at the risk of prosecution and potential demolition. It would also help encourage business development by making investment more secure and facilitate government funding to these communities. If needed the EU or European Investment Bank could provide financial support to such initiatives, while extra capacity could be mobilised among any UK planners at a loose end after coalition cuts internationally to help boost local capacity and supporting the work of local NGOs.
In the workplace, having missed its 2008 target of achieving 10 per cent representation from the Arab community in the civil service by a four per cent margin, it is imperative that the Israeli government redouble its efforts to achieve this proportion by the new 2012 deadline, as on current trends it will fail to do so. In the private sector the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission can play an extremely important role, but it needs to be able to expand its capacity and become more independent if it is to fulfil its potential, building on the work of its twinning project with the Northern Ireland Equality Commission. The case remains for an official equality commission with a wider remit to promote equality across society through education and advocacy.
Israel needs to undertake a major housebuilding programme in Arab majority areas (including new public housing) and further reform of the allocation practices of the Israel Land Administration, Jewish National Fund and private housing providers in order to tackle the chronic shortage of suitable housing. It should also move to end systemic disparities such as in local government finance where Arab municipalities receive less than five per cent of the total discretionary state development funding and in welfare spending that is 32 per cent lower in the Arab than the Jewish community despite there being three times as many people below the poverty line.
In the Knesset the recent attempts at discriminatory legislation on access to communities, loyalty oaths for new citizens and on commemoration of the Palestinian historical narrative have undoubtedly further undermined trust in the political system among members of the Arab community. The extremely low percentage of Arab-Palestinian and Bedouin citizens voting for mainstream Israeli parties in 2009 should have been a warning shot to the Israeli political class about the polarisation of its politics but the current coalition has been taking forward issues that were once at the fringes of Israeli politics. Moderate forces within Israeli political life must firmly reject measures that enflame community tensions, limit free speech and legitimate debate about the country’s future. The UK and EU must be similarly be robust in their opposition to attempts to restrict their financial support for NGOs in Israel that would be in breach of the commitments made in the EU-Israel Association Agreement and Action Plan.
The need for robust debate about how to achieve equality for Israel’s Arab community must not be abused to provide fuel for extremist attempts on either side to undermine either Israel or the citizenship of any of its citizens. Many of these important issues have been relevant for decades and it is deeply unfortunate that Israel did not take the opportunities provided by the findings of the Or Commission judicial inquiry over seven years ago to address them.
The UK still has some way to go till we achieve equality and full integration between our own communities but drawing on our experiences and the mechanisms used to get where we by spreading best practice are can help use our best practice to work with progressive forces both in Israel and beyond. Going in the other direction the work of the UK taskforce on issues facing Arab Citizens of Israel can help UK policymakers engage on this issue in an informed and supportive manner. It is through partnership we must redouble our efforts to bring about a future where the pledge made by Israel’s founders at its independence to give its Arab community the rights of ‘full and equal citizens’ can be fulfilled.